EFI and Landa Corporation have entered into a partnership agreement for the development of a digital front end (DFE) as part of Landa's end-to-end Nanographic Printing solution. Landa's new DFE will employ high-performance, EFI-developed Fiery technology. With this technology, the Landa DFE will offer unique, new functionality for sheetfed and webfed Landa Nanographic Printing Presses in the commercial, folding carton, point-of-sale, publishing and flexible packaging markets.

The Landa DFE will stream jobs at full printing speed for 4-8 color printing with Landa Nanographic Printing Presses and will enable press operators to perform last-minute job changes on the press, to proof jobs and to print rush jobs on-the-fly. In addition, it will collect production feedback from the presses and support closed-loop color control and inspection. The Landa DFE will support all job dynamics including static, VDP (Variable Data Printing) and EPID (Every Page Is Different) printing.

EFI CEO Guy Gecht and Landa chairman and CEO Benny Landa announced the partnership to an audience of 1,000+ EFI customers during the opening session of Connect, EFI's annual users conference in Las Vegas.

"Benny Landa is a legend in our industry, and we are excited to work with his company as its exclusive DFE technology provider," said Gecht. "Landa Nanographic Printing Presses have potential to accelerate the migration of mainstream commercial printing and packaging to digital printing. The Landa DFE provides a proven, ultra-high-speed and well-integrated front-end platform that Landa customers will require."

"Our unique Nanographic Printing process enables us to offer offset-quality digital printing and a combination of format size and throughput speeds unprecedented in the graphic arts industry," said Benny Landa. "Reaching this remarkable and exciting goal requires partnering with best-in-class providers. That is the reason we chose Fiery technology and EFI as our development partner - to deliver the highest quality ultra-high-speed front-end platform to match the quality and performance of our Nanographic Printing presses."

Landa selected EFI because of its technology leadership and expertise in high-speed digital systems and color and print management. Landa customers can use the new DFE to create an end-to-end solution that naturally fits into their printing operation, whether full offset, all-digital or hybrid offset/digital.

The new Landa DFE will enter beta testing as part of the beta installations of the B1 (41 in. / 1,050 mm) format Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press slated for Q4 of this year.